For most of 2025, a grade 11 student at Glendale Academy Hyderabad has taught herself economics on Youtube. “Our teacher barely explained anything. We’d sit through classes copying points from the textbook,” she said.

Just four years ago, this would have been unthinkable.

Under its founding leadership, the international school was regarded as one of the best in southern India.

But that reputation began to fray in 2023 after its acquisition by Singapore-based non-profit Global Schools Foundation (GSF), backed by global alternative-investment manager Apollo Global Management. The school’s teaching-and-support staff has been slashed by 20%, annual budgets trimmed, and long-held traditions—like the founder’s memorial football and volleyball tournament—quietly dropped, according to a former executive at the school who declined to be named as they didn’t want to comment on new management. All due to scale-up pressures ahead of Apollo’s proposedBloombergApollo-backed global schools group is said to weigh stake sale stake sale.

As a result, overall student strength has dropped 20% over the past two years.

Schools like Hyderabad’s Sancta Maria and Oakridge—which runs five schools across the country—have grappled with similar churn post acquisition by international-school operators.

This isn’t a coincidence.

Private equity firms are betting big on Indian education, and their playbook mirrors a Western model—optimised for cost control, standardised for scale-up, and centralised for effective management. But this doesn’t sit well with India’s far more volatile, rapidly changing education market.

Still, the influx of capital has been swift. The New Education PolicyA comprehensive framework for India's education system proposed by the Indian government in 2020, which is rooted in Indian values and emphasises flexibility and interdisciplinarity, with its relaxed rules on foreign investment—including full ownership in universities—has opened the door. Since 2021, GSF has acquired over five school chains in India and plans to deploy $550 millionEconomic TimesSingapore's global school's foundation to invest $550 million in India's education sector in the country by 2026.

International Schools Partnership (ISP)—a global company backed by investment firm Partners Group that has $174 billion in assets under management—entered India in 2021 and now owns four school chains here.